Homily for the 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, year A
Stuck in the middle of August is this really powerful, insightful, challenging, disturbing, essential message. You know, it’s one of the few times that we find that the Old Testament reading and the Psalm and the epistle from Paul and the Gospel all have the same central message. Trust me, for any of us who have been working on homilies a lot, you know, we know that rarely occurs. You’re going to have to pick which track you’re going to be in. But this is one of those very rare Sundays. And then we have this Gospel from Matthew. It’s kind of short, which means we have to make up for it by making it a longer homily. But it’s a much deeper story than what you would get from just hearing those words about this woman who asked Jesus to help her daughter. So let me give you a bit of context for this.
Firstly, it’s the Gospel of Saint Matthew. Now, I don’t know if you know Matthew, but Matthew was an outsider. He was a tax collector. It’s those words that even today, especially around April, can strike fear in the hearts of people when they have to submit their tax returns to the CRA. He was a tax collector, which meant that he was also working in conjunction with the occupying forces of Rome. And that meant that he would be forbidden to go to temple to worship God. He was, in a sense to use kind of our words for it, excommunicated. And it was because that he worked closely with the Roman occupiers. So that’s Matthew. That’s his life experience that he brings to his understanding as he writes the Gospel.
And then we have this Canaanite lady who’s also an outcast. Not only because at that time being a woman meant that you had not a lot of rights and privileges, but she was also not welcome among the Jewish people because she was a Canaanite. Now, I don’t know if you know much about geography. Tyre and Sidon is way at the north end of Palestine, as it would have been in those days. Now you would find it’s in Lebanon. But there were no Jews there at all. It was all Canaanite people. And the Canaanite people historically had hated the Jews. And in turn, the Jews had hated the Canaanites. Remember that when Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down? That battle was against the Canaanites. This wasn’t something just recent. This had been going on for centuries. And so this prejudice against each other was built in.
And to their amazement, Jesus heads them up into this area where there are no Jewish people. And this woman, this Canaanite woman, starts to shout at them at a distance, “Lord, have mercy on me, son of David”. Now there’s that little phrase, son of David. Fascinating. Because saying son of David meant that she knew that Jesus was the Messiah to the Hebrews. As much as the Canaanites and the Jews didn’t like each other, she was astute enough to recognize by calling him son of David that this indeed was the prophesied Messiah of the Jewish people.
And so we see that the disciples then start to get on his case and say, well, if you should get rid of this woman. And he says something very interesting to his disciples. He says, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Why are you asking me to heal this pagan woman, this woman who’s been rejected by your community because she’s a woman, because she’s pagan, because she belongs to an enemy nation? I think Jesus wants the disciples to hear that because it was a teachable moment for them. And it’s a teachable moment for you and I too.
And then this lady comes close, kneels at the feet of Jesus. And then we have this fascinating dialogue that goes on with Jesus saying, well, it’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs. The Israelites used to call the Canaanites dogs. What was going on there?
He’s trying to teach Matthew, who knows what it is to be rejected, and he’s trying to teach the disciples too that
you don’t throw people away and shove them away because they’re not one of your own kind, because they do not share your faith. Jesus knows that he has come to a world that is full of pain and full of sorrow. And he says to her,
“Woman, great is your faith let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
And therein lies one of the key messages from all of the readings that we had today. From the reading from Isaiah, from the psalm, from the letter of Paul to the Romans, and from the Gospel. The key message in all those readings is that it doesn’t matter whether you’re Jew or Gentile. It doesn’t matter whether you come from one group or another group. It doesn’t matter what your history is. It doesn’t matter where you were born. It doesn’t matter what you do.
There are only two things that matter, Jesus says. The first is faith. And it’s not faith I say, oh, I believe in this particular credo or this particular set of beliefs. It’s the faith that is best captured by saying, I give my life into your hands, God. Do what you want, but please heal my daughter. I believe you. I believe in you. And I know you can do this. That is the faith of this woman from Canaan that she brings to the foot of Jesus. And of course, the second thing, no surprise, is love. Because this woman loved her daughter so much that she humbled herself. She endured the ridicule of everyone who was against her to come down and to kneel and ask for help from a people that she knew despised her. Yet in front of that people, she knelt and asked for help. Isn’t it interesting that the only thing that could overcome the prejudices of the culture and the people was love, and in particular, a mother’s love?
The readings today present an important and challenging lesson to us all. It’s a reminder that God’s love is for everybody, that all are invited to God’s table. And that in God’s family, no one is a stranger.
Which leaves me with just one question for us to ponder. Who are like the Canaanite woman today? Who, from a marginal, rejected, or excluded community, invites you and I, and invites the church, to see that they, too, deserve to be heard?